TRANSLATED BY ALFRED J. CHURCH & WILLIAM J. BRODRIBB, 1864-1877

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1:1. ROME at the beginning was ruled by kings. Freedom
and the consulship were established by Lucius Brutus. Dictatorships
were held for a temporary crisis. The power of the decemvirs did not
last beyond two years, nor was the consular jurisdiction of the
military tribunes of long duration. The despotisms of Cinna and Sulla
were brief; the rule of Pompeius and of Crassus soon yielded before
Caesar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus; who, when
the world was wearied by civil strife, subjected it to empire under
the title of "Prince." But the successes and reverses of the old Roman
people have been recorded by famous historians; and fine intellects
were not wanting to describe the times of Augustus, till growing
sycophancy scared them away. The histories of Tiberius, Caius,
Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through
terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a
recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about
Augustus - more particularly his last acts, then the reign of
Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or
partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.

1:2. When after the destruction of Brutus and Cassius there was no
longer any army of the Commonwealth, when Pompeius was crushed in Sicily,
and when, with Lepidus pushed aside and Antonius slain, even the Julian
faction had only Caesar left to lead it, then, dropping the title of
triumvir, and giving out that he was a Consul, and was satisfied with a
tribune's authority for the protection of the people, Augustus won over
the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with
the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees, while he
concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and
the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in
battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier
they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion,
so that, aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the
present to the dangerous past. Nor did the provinces dislike that
condition of affairs, for they distrusted the government of the Senate
and the people, because of the rivalries between the leading men and the
rapacity of the officials, while the protection of the laws was
unavailing, as they were continually deranged by violence, intrigue, and
finally by corruption.

1:3. Augustus meanwhile, as supports to his despotism, raised to the
pontificate and curule aedileship Claudius Marcellus, his sister's son,
while a mere stripling, and Marcus Agrippa, of humble birth, a good
soldier, and one who had shared his victory, to two consecutive
consulships, and as Marcellus soon afterwards died, he also accepted him
as his son-in-law. Tiberius Nero and Claudius Drusus, his stepsons, he
honoured with imperial tides, although his own family was as yet
undiminished. For he had admitted the children of Agrippa, Caius and
Lucius, into the house of the Caesars; and before they had yet laid aside
the dress of boyhood he had most fervently desired, with an outward show
of reluctance, that they should be entitled "princes of the youth," and
be consuls-elect. When Agrippa died, and Lucius Caesar as he was on his
way to our armies in Spain, and Caius while returning from Armenia, still
suffering from a wound, were prematurely cut off by destiny, or by their
step- mother Livia's treachery, Drusus too having long been dead, Nero
remained alone of the stepsons, and in him everything tended to centre.
He was adopted as a son, as a colleague in empire and a partner in the
tribunitian power, and paraded through all the armies, no longer through
his mother's secret intrigues, but at her open suggestion. For she had
gained such a hold on the aged Augustus that he drove out as an exile
into the island of Planasia, his only grandson, Agrippa Postumus, who,
though devoid of worthy qualities, and having only the brute courage of
physical strength, had not been convicted of any gross offence. And yet
Augustus had appointed Germanicus, Drusus's offspring, to the command of
eight legions on the Rhine, and required Tiberius to adopt him, although
Tiberius had a son, now a young man, in his house; but he did it that he
might have several safeguards to rest on. He had no war at the time on
his hands except against the Germans, which was rather to wipe out the
disgrace of the loss of Quintilius Varus and his army than out of an
ambition to extend the empire, or for any adequate recompense. At home
all was tranquil, and there were magistrates with the same titles; there
was a younger generation, sprung up since the victory of Actium, and even
many of the older men had been born during the civil wars. How few were
left who had seen the republic!

1:4. Thus the State had been revolutionised, and there was not a
vestige left of the old sound morality. Stript of equality, all looked up
to the commands of a sovereign without the least apprehension for the
present, while Augustus in the vigour of life, could maintain his own
position, that of his house, and the general tranquillity. When in
advanced old age, he was worn out by a sickly frame, and the end was near
and new prospects opened, a few spoke in vain of the blessings of
freedom, but most people dreaded and some longed for war. The popular
gossip of the large majority fastened itself variously on their future
masters. "Agrippa was savage, and had been exasperated by insult, and
neither from age nor experience in affairs was equal to so great a
burden. Tiberius Nero was of mature years, and had established his fame
in war, but he had the old arrogance inbred in the Claudian family, and
many symptoms of a cruel temper, though they were repressed, now and then
broke out. He had also from earliest infancy been reared in an imperial
house; consulships and triumphs had been heaped on him in his younger
days; even in the years which, on the pretext of seclusion he spent in
exile at Rhodes, he had had no thoughts but of wrath, hypocrisy, and
secret sensuality. There was his mother too with a woman caprice. They
must, it seemed, be subject to a female and to two striplings besides,
who for a while would burden, and some day rend asunder the State."

1:5. While these and like topics were discussed, the infirmities of
Augustus increased, and some suspected guilt on his wife's part. For a
rumour had gone abroad that a few months before he had sailed to Planasia
on a visit to Agrippa, with the knowledge of some chosen friends, and
with one companion, Fabius Maximus; that many tears were shed on both
sides, with expressions of affection, and that thus there was a hope of
the young man being restored to the home of his grandfather. This, it was
said, Maximus had divulged to his wife Marcia, she again to Livia. All
was known to Caesar, and when Maximus soon afterwards died, by a death
some thought to be self-inflicted, there were heard at his funeral
wailings from Marcia, in which she reproached herself for having been the
cause of her husband's destruction. Whatever the fact was, Tiberius as he
was just entering Illyria was summoned home by an urgent letter from his
mother, and it has not been thoroughly ascertained whether at the city of
Nola he found Augustus still breathing or quite lifeless. For Livia had
surrounded the house and its approaches with a strict watch, and
favourable bulletins were published from time to time, till, provision
having been made for the demands of the crisis, one and the same report
told men that Augustus was dead and that Tiberius Nero was master of the
State.

1:6. The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus
Agrippa. Though he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest
resolution despatched him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation
of the matter to the Senate; he pretended that there were directions from
his father ordering the tribune in charge of the prisoner not to delay
the slaughter of Agrippa, whenever he should himself have breathed his
last. Beyond a doubt, Augustus had often complained of the young man's
character, and had thus succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a decree
of the Senate for his banishment. But he never was hard-hearted enough to
destroy any of his kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to be the
sentence of the grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure. It
was more probable that Tiberius and Livia, the one from fear, the other
from a stepmother's enmity, hurried on the destruction of a youth whom
they suspected and hated. When the centurion reported, according to
military custom, that he had executed the command, Tiberius replied that
he had not given the command, and that the act must be justified to the
Senate. As soon as Sallustius Crispus who shared the secret (he had, in
fact, sent the written order to the tribune) knew this, fearing that the
charge would be shifted on himself, and that his peril would be the same
whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia not to divulge the
secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any services
performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength of
imperial power by referring everything to the Senate, for "the
condition," he said, "of holding empire is that an account cannot be
balanced unless it be rendered to one person."

1:7-10.
TIBERIUS'S FIRST MEETING WITH THE SENATE; THE FUNERAL OF
AUGUSTUS

1:7. Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery - consuls,
senators, knights. The higher a man's rank, the more eager his hypocrisy,
and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at
the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he
mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery. Sextus Pompeius and
Sextus Apuleius, the consuls, were the first to swear allegiance to
Tiberius Caesar, and in their presence the oath was taken by Seius Strabo
and Caius Turranius, respectively the commander of the praetorian cohorts
and the superintendent of the corn supplies. Then the Senate, the
soldiers and the people did the same. For Tiberius would inaugurate
everything with the consuls, as though the ancient constitution remained,
and he hesitated about being emperor. Even the proclamation by which he
summoned the senators to their chamber, he issued merely with the title
of Tribune, which he had received under Augustus. The wording of the
proclamation was brief, and in a very modest tone. "He would," it said,
"provide for the honours due to his father, and not leave the lifeless
body, and this was the only public duty he now claimed." As soon,
however, as Augustus was dead, he had given the watchword to the
praetorian cohorts, as commander-in-chief. He had the guard under arms,
with all the other adjuncts of a court; soldiers attended him to the
forum; soldiers went with him to the Senate House. He sent letters to the
different armies, as though supreme power was now his, and showed
hesitation only when he spoke in the Senate. His chief motive was fear
that Germanicus, who had at his disposal so many legions, such vast
auxiliary forces of the allies, and such wonderful popularity, might
prefer the possession to the expectation of empire. He looked also at
public opinion, wishing to have the credit of having been called and
elected by the State rather than of having crept into power through the
intrigues of a wife and a dotard's adoption. It was subsequently
understood that he assumed a wavering attitude, to test likewise the
temper of the nobles. For he would twist a word or a look into a crime
and treasure it up in his memory.

1:8. On the first day of the Senate he allowed nothing to be
discussed but the funeral of Augustus, whose will, which was brought in
by the Vestal Virgins, named as his heirs Tiberius and Livia. The latter
was to be admitted into the Julian family with the name of Augusta; next
in expectation were the grand and great-grandchildren. In the third
place, he had named the chief men of the State, most of whom he hated,
simply out of ostentation and to win credit with posterity. His legacies
were not beyond the scale of a private citizen, except a bequest of
forty-three million five hundred thousand sesterces "to the people and
populace of Rome," of one thousand to every praetorian soldier, and of
three hundred to every man in the legionary cohorts composed of Roman
citizens. Next followed a deliberation about funeral honours. Of these
the most imposing were thought fitting. The procession was to be
conducted through "the gate of triumph," on the motion of Gallus Asinius;
the titles of the laws passed, the names of the nations conquered by
Augustus were to be borne in front, on that of Lucius Arruntius. Messala
Valerius further proposed that the oath of allegiance to Tiberius should
be yearly renewed, and when Tiberius asked him whether it was at his
bidding that he had brought forward this motion, he replied that he had
proposed it spontaneously, and that in whatever concerned the State he
would use only his own discretion, even at the risk of offending. This
was the only style of adulation which yet remained. The Senators
unanimously exclaimed that the body ought to be borne on their shoulders
to the funeral pile. The emperor left the point to them with disdainful
moderation, he then admonished the people by a proclamation not to
indulge in that tumultuous enthusiasm which had distracted the funeral of
the Divine Julius, or express a wish that Augustus should be burnt in the
Forum instead of in his appointed resting-place in the Campus Martius. On
the day of the funeral soldiers stood round as a guard, amid much
ridicule from those who had either themselves witnessed or who had heard
from their parents of the famous day when slavery was still something
fresh, and freedom had been resought in vain, when the slaying of Caesar,
the Dictator, seemed to some the vilest, to others, the most glorious of
deeds. "Now," they said, "an aged sovereign, whose power had lasted long,
who had provided his heirs with abundant means to coerce the State,
requires forsooth the defence of soldiers that his burial may be
undisturbed."

1:9. Then followed much talk about Augustus himself, and many
expressed an idle wonder that the same day marked the beginning of his
assumption of empire and the close of his life, and, again, that he had
ended his days at Nola in the same house and room as his father Octavius.
People extolled too the number of his consulships, in which he had
equalled Valerius Corvus and Caius Marius combined, the continuance for
thirty-seven years of the tribunitian power, the title of Imperator
twenty-one times earned, and his other honours which had either
frequently repeated or were wholly new. Sensible men, however, spoke
variously of his life with praise and censure. Some said "that dutiful
feeling towards a father, and the necessities of the State in which laws
had then no place, drove him into civil war, which can neither be planned
nor conducted on any right principles. He had often yielded to Antonius,
while he was taking vengeance on his father's murderers, often also to
Lepidus. When the latter sank into feeble dotage and the former had been
ruined by his profligacy, the only remedy for his distracted country was
the rule of a single man. Yet the State had been organized under the name
neither of a kingdom nor a dictatorship, but under that of a prince. The
ocean and remote rivers were the boundaries of the empire; the legions,
provinces, fleets, all things were linked together; there was law for the
citizens; there was respect shown to the allies. The capital had been
embellished on a grand scale; only in a few instances had he resorted to
force, simply to secure general tranquillity."

1:10. It was said, on the other hand, "that filial duty
and State necessity were merely assumed as a mask. It was really from
a lust of sovereignty that he had excited the veterans by bribery,
had, when a young man and a subject, raised an army, tampered with the
Consul's legions, and feigned an attachment to the faction of
Pompeius. Then, when by a decree of the Senate he had usurped the high
functions and authority of Praetor when Hirtius and Pansa were slain -
whether they were destroyed by the enemy, or Pansa by poison infused
into a wound, Hirtius by his own soldiers and Caesar's treacherous
machinations - he at once possessed himself of both their armies,
wrested the consulate from a reluctant Senate, and turned against the
State the arms with which he had been intrusted against Antonius.
Citizens were proscribed, lands divided, without so much as the
approval of those who executed these deeds. Even granting that the
deaths of Cassius and of the Bruti were sacrifices to a hereditary
enmity (though duty requires us to waive private feuds for the sake of
the public welfare), still Pompeius had been deluded by the phantom of
peace, and Lepidus by the mask of friendship. Subsequently, Antonius
had been lured on by the treaties of Tarentum and Brundisium, and by
his marriage with the sister, and paid by his death the penalty of a
treacherous alliance. No doubt, there was peace after all this, but it
was a peace stained with blood; there were the disasters of Lollius
and Varus, the murders at Rome of the Varros, Egnatii, and Juli." The
domestic life too of Augustus was not spared. "Nero's wife had been
taken from him, and there had been the farce of consulting the
pontiffs, whether, with a child conceived and not yet born, she could
properly marry. There were the excesses of Quintus Tedius and Vedius
Pollio; last of all, there was Livia, terrible to the State as a
mother, terrible to the house of the Caesars as a stepmother. No
honour was left for the gods, when Augustus chose to be himself
worshipped with temples and statues, like those of the deities, and
with flamens and priests. He had not even adopted Tiberius as his
successor out of affection or any regard to the State, but, having
thoroughly seen his arrogant and savage temper, he had sought glory
for himself by a contrast of extreme wickedness." For, in fact,
Augustus, a few years before, when he was a second time asking from
the Senate the tribunitian power for Tiberius, though his speech was
complimentary, had thrown out certain hints as to his manners, style,
and habits of life, which he meant as reproaches, while he seemed to
excuse. However, when his obsequies had been duly performed, a temple
with a religious ritual was decreed him.

1:11. After this all prayers were addressed to Tiberius. He, on his
part, urged various considerations, the greatness of the empire, his
distrust of himself. "Only," he said, "the intellect of the Divine
Augustus was equal to such a burden. Called as he had been by him to
share his anxieties, he had learnt by experience how exposed to fortune's
caprices was the task of universal rule. Consequently, in a state which
had the support of so many great men, they should not put everything on
one man, as many, by uniting their efforts would more easily discharge
public functions." There was more grand sentiment than good faith in such
words. Tiberius's language even in matters which he did not care to
conceal, either from nature or habit, was always hesitating and obscure,
and now that he was struggling to hide his feelings completely, it was
all the more involved in uncertainty and doubt. The Senators, however,
whose only fear was lest they might seem to understand him, burst into
complaints, tears, and prayers. They raised their hands to the gods, to
the statue of Augustus, and to the knees of Tiberius, when he ordered a
document to be produced and read. This contained a description of the
resources of the State, of the number of citizens and allies under arms,
of the fleets, subject kingdoms, provinces, taxes, direct and indirect,
necessary expenses and customary bounties. All these details Augustus had
written with his own hand, and had added a counsel, that the empire
should be confined to its present limits, either from fear or out of
jealousy.

1:12. Meantime, while the Senate stooped to the most abject
supplication, Tiberius happened to say that although he was not equal to
the whole burden of the State, yet he would undertake the charge of
whatever part of it might be intrusted to him. Thereupon Asinius Gallus
said, "I ask you, Caesar, what part of the State you wish to have
intrusted to you?" Confounded by the sudden inquiry he was silent for a
few moments; then, recovering his presence of mind, he replied that it
would by no means become his modesty to choose or to avoid in a case
where he would prefer to be wholly excused. Then Gallus again, who had
inferred anger from his looks, said that the question had not been asked
with the intention of dividing what could not be separated, but to
convince him by his own admission that the body of the State was one, and
must be directed by a single mind. He further spoke in praise of
Augustus, and reminded Tiberius himself of his victories, and of his
admirable deeds for many years as a civilian. Still, he did not thereby
soften the emperor's resentment, for he had long been detested from an
impression that, as he had married Vipsania, daughter of Marcus Agrippa,
who had once been the wife of Tiberius, he aspired to be more than a
citizen, and kept up the arrogant tone of his father, Asinius
Pollio.

1:13. Next, Lucius Arruntius, who differed but little from the speech
of Gallus, gave like offence, though Tiberius had no old grudge against
him, but simply mistrusted him, because he was rich and daring, had
brilliant accomplishments, and corresponding popularity. For Augustus,
when in his last conversations he was discussing who would refuse the
highest place, though sufficiently capable, who would aspire to it
without being equal to it, and who would unite both the ability and
ambition, had described Marcus Lepidus as able but contemptuously
indifferent, Gallus Asinius as ambitious and incapable, Lucius Arruntius
as not unworthy of it, and, should the chance be given him, sure to make
the venture. About the two first there is a general agreement, but
instead of Arruntius some have mentioned Cneius Piso, and all these men,
except Lepidus, were soon afterwards destroyed by various charges through
the contrivance of Tiberius. Quintus Haterius too and Mamercus Scaurus
ruffled his suspicious temper, Haterius by having said - "How long,
Caesar, will you suffer the State to be without a head?" Scaurus by the
remark that there was a hope that the Senate's prayers would not be
fruitless, seeing that he had not used his right as Tribune to negative
the motion of the Consuls. Tiberius instantly broke out into invective
against Haterius; Scaurus, with whom he was far more deeply displeased,
he passed over in silence. Wearied at last by the assembly's clamorous
importunity and the urgent demands of individual Senators, he gave way by
degrees, not admitting that he undertook empire, but yet ceasing to
refuse it and to be entreated. It is known that Haterius having entered
the palace to ask pardon, and thrown himself at the knees of Tiberius as
he was walking, was almost killed by the soldiers, because Tiberius fell
forward, accidentally or from being entangled by the suppliant's hands.
Yet the peril of so great a man did not make him relent, till Haterius
went with entreaties to Augusta, and was saved by her very earnest
intercessions.

1:14. Great too was the Senate's sycophancy to Augusta. Some would
have her styled "parent"; others "mother of the country," and a majority
proposed that to the name of Caesar should be added "son of Julia." The
emperor repeatedly asserted that there must be a limit to the honours
paid to women, and that he would observe similar moderation in those
bestowed on himself, but annoyed at the invidious proposal, and indeed
regarding a woman's elevation as a slight to himself, he would not allow
so much as a lictor to be assigned her, and forbade the erection of an
altar in memory of her adoption, and any like distinction. But for
Germanicus Caesar he asked pro-consular powers, and envoys were
despatched to confer them on him, and also to express sympathy with his
grief at the death of Augustus. The same request was not made for Drusus,
because he was consul elect and present at Rome. Twelve candidates were
named for the praetorship, the number which Augustus had handed down, and
when the Senate urged Tiberius to increase it, he bound himself by an
oath not to exceed it.

1:15. It was then for the first time that the elections were
transferred from the Campus Martius to the Senate. For up to that day,
though the most important rested with the emperor's choice, some were
settled by the partialities of the tribes. Nor did the people complain of
having the right taken from them, except in mere idle talk, and the
Senate, being now released from the necessity of bribery and of degrading
solicitations, gladly upheld the change, Tiberius confining himself to
the recommendation of only four candidates who were to be nominated
without rejection or canvass. Meanwhile the tribunes of the people asked
leave to exhibit at their own expense games to be named after Augustus
and added to the Calendar as the Augustales. Money was, however, voted
from the exchequer, and though the use of the triumphal robe in the
circus was prescribed, it was not allowed them to ride in a chariot. Soon
the annual celebration was transferred to the praetor, to whose lot fell
the administration of justice between citizens and foreigners.

1:16. This was the state of affairs at Rome when a mutiny broke out
in the legions of Pannonia, which could be traced to no fresh cause
except the change of emperors and the prospect it held out of license in
tumult and of profit from a civil war. In the summer camp three legions
were quartered, under the command of Junius Blaesus, who on hearing of
the death of Augustus and the accession of Tiberius, had allowed his men
a rest from military duties, either for mourning or rejoicing. This was
the beginning of demoralization among the troops, of quarreling, of
listening to the talk of every pestilent fellow, in short, of craving for
luxury and idleness and loathing discipline and toil. In the camp was one
Percennius, who had once been a leader of one of the theatrical factions,
then became a common soldier, had a saucy tongue, and had learnt from his
applause of actors how to stir up a crowd. By working on ignorant minds,
which doubted as to what would be the terms of military service after
Augustus, this man gradually influenced them in conversations at night or
at nightfall, and when the better men had dispersed, he gathered round
him all the worst spirits.

1:17. At last, when there were others ready to be abettors of a
mutiny, he asked, in the tone of a demagogue, why, like slaves, they
submitted to a few centurions and still fewer tribunes. "When," he said,
"will you dare to demand relief, if you do not go with your prayers or
arms to a new and yet tottering throne? We have blundered enough by our
tameness for so many years, in having to endure thirty or forty campaigns
till we grow old, most of us with bodies maimed by wounds. Even dismissal
is not the end of our service, but, quartered under a legion's standard
we toil through the same hardships under another title. If a soldier
survives so many risks, he is still dragged into remote regions where,
under the name of lands, he receives soaking swamps or mountainous
wastes. Assuredly, military service itself is burdensome and
unprofitable; ten ases a day is the value set on life and limb; out of
this, clothing, arms, tents, as well as the mercy of centurions and
exemptions from duty have to be purchased. But indeed of floggings and
wounds, of hard winters, wearisome summers, of terrible war, or barren
peace, there is no end. Our only relief can come from military life being
entered on under fixed conditions, from receiving each the pay of a
denarius, and from the sixteenth year terminating our service. We must be
retained no longer under a standard, but in the same camp a compensation
in money must be paid us. Do the praetorian cohorts, which have just got
their two denarii per man, and which after sixteen years are restored to
their homes, encounter more perils? We do not disparage the guards of the
capital; still, here amid barbarous tribes we have to face the enemy from
our tents."

1:18. The throng applauded from various motives, some pointing with
indignation to the marks of the lash, others to their grey locks, and
most of them to their threadbare garments and naked limbs. At, last, in
their fury they went so far as to propose to combine the three legions
into one. Driven from their purpose by the jealousy with which every one
sought the chief honour for his own legion, they turned to other
thoughts, and set up in one spot the three eagles, with the ensigns of
the cohorts. At the same time they piled up turf and raised a mound, that
they might have a more conspicuous meeting-place. Amid the bustle Blaesus
came up. He upbraided them and held back man after man with the
exclamation, "Better imbrue your hands in my blood: it will be less guilt
to slay your commander than it is to be in revolt from the emperor.
Either living I will uphold the loyalty of the legions, or pierced to the
heart I will hasten on your repentance."

1:19. None the less however was the mound piled up, and it was quite
breast high when, at last overcome by his persistency, they gave up their
purpose. Blaesus, with the consummate tact of an orator, said, "It is not
through mutiny and tumult that the desires of the army ought to be
communicated to Caesar, nor did our soldiers of old ever ask so novel a
boon of ancient commanders, nor have you yourselves asked it of the
Divine Augustus. It is far from opportune that the emperor's cares, now
in their first beginning, should be aggravated. If, however, you are bent
upon attempting in peace what even after your victory in the civil wars
you did not demand, why, contrary to the habit of obedience, contrary to
the law of discipline, do you meditate violence? Decide on sending
envoys, and give them instructions in your presence." It was carried by
acclamation that the son of Blaesus, one of the tribunes, should
undertake the mission, and demand for the soldiers release from service
after sixteen years. He was to have the rest of their message when the
first part had been successful. After the young man departure there was
comparative quiet, but there was an arrogant tone among the soldiers, to
whom the fact that their commander's son was pleading their common cause
clearly showed that they had wrested by compulsion what they had failed
to obtain by good behaviour.

1:20. Meanwhile the companies which previous to the
mutiny had been sent to Nauportus to make roads and bridges and for
other purposes, when they heard of the tumult in the camp, tore up the
standards, and having plundered the neighbouring villages and
Nauportus itself, which was like a town, assailed the centurions who
restrained them with jeers and insults, last of all, with blows. Their
chief rage was against Aufidienus Rufus, the camp-prefect, whom they
dragged from a waggon, loaded with baggage, and drove on at the head
of the column, asking him in ridicule whether he liked to bear such
huge burdens and such long marches. Rufus, who had long been a common
soldier, then a centurion, and subsequently camp-prefect, tried to
revive the old severe discipline, inured as he was to work and toil,
and all the sterner because he had endured.

1:21. On the arrival of these troops the mutiny broke out afresh, and
straggling from the camp they plundered the neighbourhood. Blaesus
ordered a few who had conspicuously loaded themselves with spoil to be
scourged and imprisoned as a terror to the rest; for, even as it then
was, the commander was still obeyed by the centurions and by all the best
men among the soldiers. As the men were dragged off, they struggled
violently, clasped the knees of the bystanders, called to their comrades
by name, or to the company, cohort, or legion to which they respectively
belonged, exclaiming that all were threatened with the same fate. At the
same time they heaped abuse on the commander; they appealed to heaven and
to the gods, and left nothing undone by which they might excite
resentment and pity, alarm and rage. They all rushed to the spot, broke
open the guardhouse, unbound the prisoners, and were in a moment
fraternising with deserters and men convicted on capital charges.

1:22. Thence arose a more furious outbreak, with more leaders of the
mutiny. Vibulenus, a common soldier, was hoisted in front of the
general's tribunal on the shoulders of the bystanders and addressed the
excited throng, who eagerly awaited his intentions. "You have indeed," he
said, "restored light and air to these innocent and most unhappy men, but
who restores to my brother his life, or my brother to myself? Sent to you
by the German army in our common cause, he was last night butchered by
the gladiators whom the general keeps and arms for the destruction of his
soldiers. Answer, Blaesus, where you have flung aside the corpse? Even an
enemy grudges not burial. When, with embraces and tears, I have sated my
grief, order me also to be slain, provided only that when we have been
destroyed for no crime, but only because we consulted the good of the
legions, we may be buried by these men around me."

1:23. He inflamed their excitement by weeping and smiting his breast
and face with his hands. Then, hurling aside those who bore him on their
shoulders, and impetuously flinging himself at the feet of one man after
another, he roused such dismay and indignation that some of the soldiers
put fetters on the gladiators who were among the number of Blaesus's
slaves, others did the like to the rest of his household, while a third
party hurried out to look for the corpse. And had it not quickly been
known that no corpse was found, that the slaves, when tortures were
applied, denied the murder, and that the man never had a brother, they
would have been on the point of destroying the general. As it was, they
thrust out the tribunes and the camp-prefect; they plundered the baggage
of the fugitives, and they killed a centurion, Lucilius, to whom, with
soldiers' humour, they had given the name "Bring another," because when
he had broken one vine-stick on a man's back, he would call in a loud
voice for another and another. The rest sheltered themselves in
concealment, and one only was detained, Clemens Julius, whom the soldiers
considered a fit person to carry messages, from his ready wit. Two
legions, the eighth and the fifteenth, were actually drawing swords
against each other, the former demanding the death of a centurion, whom
they nicknamed Sirpicus, while the men of the fifteenth defended him, but
the soldiers of the ninth interposed their entreaties, and when these
were disregarded, their menaces.

1:24. This intelligence had such an effect on Tiberius, close as he
was, and most careful to hush up every very serious disaster, that he
despatched his son Drusus with the leading men of the State and with two
praetorian cohorts, without any definite instructions, to take suitable
measures. The cohorts were strengthened beyond their usual force with
some picked troops. There was in addition a considerable part of the
Praetorian cavalry, and the flower of the German soldiery, which was then
the emperor's guard. With them too was the commander of the praetorians,
Aelius Sejanus, who had been associated with his own father, Strabo, had
great influence with Tiberius, and was to advise and direct the young
prince, and to hold out punishment or reward to the soldiers. When Drusus
approached, the legions, as a mark of respect, met him, not as usual,
with glad looks or the glitter of military decorations, but in unsightly
squalor, and faces which, though they simulated grief, rather expressed
defiance.

1:25. As soon as he entered the entrenchments, they secured the gates
with sentries, and ordered bodies of armed men to be in readiness at
certain points of the camp. The rest crowded round the general's tribunal
in a dense mass. Drusus stood there, and with a gesture of his hand
demanded silence. As often as they turned their eyes back on the throng,
they broke into savage exclamations, then looking up to Drusus they
trembled. There was a confused hum, a fierce shouting, and a sudden lull.
Urged by conflicting emotions, they felt panic and they caused the like.
At last, in an interval of the uproar, Drusus read his father's letter,
in which it was fully stated that he had a special care for the brave
legions with which he had endured a number of campaigns; that, as soon as
his mind had recovered from its grief, he would lay their demands before
the Senators; that meanwhile he had sent his son to concede
unhesitatingly what could be immediately granted, and that the rest must
be reserved for the Senate, which ought to have a voice in showing either
favour or severity.

1:26. The crowd replied that they had delivered their instructions to
Clemens, one of the centurions, which he was to convey to Rome. He began
to speak of the soldiers' discharge after sixteen years, of the rewards
of completed service, of the daily pay being a denarius, and of the
veterans not being detained under a standard. When Drusus pleaded in
answer reference to the Senate and to his father, he was interrupted by a
tumultuous shout. "Why had he come, neither to increase the soldiers'
pay, nor to alleviate their hardships, in a word, with no power to better
their lot? Yet heaven knew that all were allowed to scourge and to
execute. Tiberius used formerly in the name of Augustus to frustrate the
wishes of the legions, and the same tricks were now revived by Drusus.
Was it only sons who were to visit them? Certainly, it was a new thing
for the emperor to refer to the Senate merely what concerned the
soldier's interests. Was then the same Senate to be consulted whenever
notice was given of an execution or of a battle? Were their rewards to be
at the discretion of absolute rulers, their punishments to be without
appeal?"

1:27. At last they deserted the general's tribunal, and to any
praetorian soldier or friend of Caesar's who met them, they used those
threatening gestures which are the cause of strife and the beginning of a
conflict, with special rage against Cneius Lentulus, because they thought
that he above all others, by his age and warlike renown, encouraged
Drusus, and was the first to scorn such blots on military discipline.
Soon after, as he was leaving with Drusus to betake himself in foresight
of his danger to the winter camp, they surrounded him, and asked him
again and again whither he was going; was it to the emperor or to the
Senate, there also to oppose the interests of the legions. At the same
moment they menaced him savagely and flung stones. And now, bleeding from
a blow, and feeling destruction certain, he was rescued by the hurried
arrival of the throng which had accompanied Drusus.

1:28. That terrible night which threatened an explosion of crime was
tranquillised by a mere accident. Suddenly in a clear sky the moon's
radiance seemed to die away. This the soldiers in their ignorance of the
cause regarded as an omen of their condition, comparing the failure of
her light to their own efforts, and imagining that their attempts would
end prosperously should her brightness and splendour be restored to the
goddess. And so they raised a din with brazen instruments and the
combined notes of trumpets and horns, with joy or sorrow, as she
brightened or grew dark. When clouds arose and obstructed their sight,
and it was thought she was buried in the gloom, with that proneness to
superstition which steals over minds once thoroughly cowed, they lamented
that this was a portent of never-ending hardship, and that heaven frowned
on their deeds. Drusus, thinking that he ought to avail himself of this
change in their temper and turn what chance had offered to a wise
account, ordered the tents to be visited. Clemens, the centurion was
summoned with all others who for their good qualities were liked by the
common soldiers. These men made their way among the patrols, sentries and
guards of the camp-gates, suggesting hope or holding out threats. "How
long will you besiege the emperor's son? What is to be the end of our
strifes? Will Percennius and Vibulenus give pay to the soldiers and land
to those who have earned their discharge? In a word, are they, instead of
the Neros and the Drusi, to control the empire of the Roman people? Why
are we not rather first in our repentance as we were last in the offence?
Demands made in common are granted slowly; a separate favour you may
deserve and receive at the same moment." With minds affected by these
words and growing mutually suspicious, they divided off the new troops
from the old, and one legion from another. Then by degrees the instinct
of obedience returned. They quitted the gates and restored to their
places the standards which at the beginning of the mutiny they had
grouped into one spot.

1:29. At daybreak Drusus called them to an assembly, and, though not
a practised speaker, yet with natural dignity upbraided them for their
past and commended their present behaviour. He was not, he said, to be
conquered by terror or by threats. Were he to see them inclining to
submission and hear the language of entreaty, he would write to his
father, that he might be merciful and receive the legions' petition. At
their prayer, Blaesus and Lucius Apronius, a Roman knight on Drusus's
staff, with Justus Catonius, a first-rank centurion, were again sent to
Tiberius. Then ensued a conflict of opinion among them, some maintaining
that it was best to wait the envoys' return and meanwhile humour the
soldiers, others, that stronger measures ought to be used, inasmuch as
the rabble knows no mean, and inspires fear, unless they are afraid,
though when they have once been overawed, they can be safely despised.
"While superstition still swayed them, the general should apply terror by
removing the leaders of the mutiny." Drusus's temper was inclined to
harsh measures. He summoned Vibulenus and Percennius and ordered them to
be put to death. The common account is that they were buried in the
general's tent, though according to some their bodies were flung outside
the entrenchments for all to see.

1:30. Search was then made for all the chief mutineers.
Some as they roamed outside the camp were cut down by the centurions
or by soldiers of the praetorian cohorts. Some even the companies gave
up in proof of their loyalty. The men's troubles were increased by an
early winter with continuous storms so violent that they could not go
beyond their tents or meet together or keep the standards in their
places, from which they were perpetually tom by hurricane and rain.
And there still lingered the dread of the divine wrath; nor was it
without meaning, they thought, that, hostile to an impious host, the
stars grew dim and storms burst over them. Their only relief from
misery was to quit an ill-omened and polluted camp, and, having purged
themselves of their guilt, to betake themselves again every one to his
winterquarters. First the eighth, then the fifteenth legion returned;
the ninth cried again and again that they ought to wait for the letter
from Tiberius, but soon finding themselves isolated by the departure
of the rest, they voluntarily forestalled their inevitable fate.
Drusus, without awaiting the envoys' return, as for the present all
was quiet, went back to Rome.

1:31. About the same time, from the same causes, the legions of
Germany rose in mutiny, with a fury proportioned to their greater
numbers, in the confident hope that Germanicus Caesar would not be able
to endure another's supremacy and offer himself to the legions, whose
strength would carry everything before it. There were two armies on the
bank of the Rhine; that named the upper army had Caius Silius for
general; the lower was under the charge of Aulus Caecina. The supreme
direction rested with Germanicus, then busily employed in conducting the
assessment of Gaul. The troops under the control of Silius, with minds
yet in suspense, watched the issue of mutiny elsewhere; but the soldiers
of the lower army fell into a frenzy, which had its beginning in the men
of the twenty- first and fifth legions, and into which the first and
twentieth were also drawn. For they were all quartered in the same
summer-camp, in the territory of the Ubii, enjoying ease or having only
light duties. Accordingly on hearing of the death of Augustus, a rabble
of city slaves, who had been enlisted under a recent levy at Rome,
habituated to laxity and impatient of hardship, filled the ignorant minds
of the other soldiers with notions that the time had come when the
veteran might demand a timely discharge, the young, more liberal pay,
all, an end of their miseries, and vengeance on the cruelty of
centurions. It was not one alone who spoke thus, as did Percennius among
the legions of Pannonia, nor was it in the ears of trembling soldiers,
who looked with apprehension to other and mightier armies, but there was
sedition in many a face and voice. "The Roman world," they said, was in
their hand; their victories aggrandised the State; it was from them that
emperors received their titles."

1:32. Nor did their commander check them. Indeed, the blind rage of
so many had robbed him of his resolution., In a sudden frenzy they rushed
with drawn swords on the centurions, the immemorial object of the
soldiers' resentment and the first cause of savage fury. They threw them
to the earth and beat them sorely, sixty to one, so as to correspond with
the number of centurions. Then tearing them from the ground, mangled, and
some lifeless, they flung them outside the entrenchments or into the
river Rhine. One Septimius, who fled to the tribunal and was grovelling
at Caecina's feet, was persistently demanded till he was given up to
destruction. Cassius Chaerea, who won for himself a memory with posterity
by the murder of Caius Caesar, being then a youth of high spirit, cleared
a passage with his sword through the armed and opposing throng. Neither
tribune nor camp-prefect maintained authority any longer. Patrols,
sentries, and whatever else the needs of the time required, were
distributed by the men themselves. To those who could guess the temper of
soldiers with some penetration, the strongest symptom of a wide-spread
and intractable commotion, was the fact that, instead of being divided or
instigated by a few persons, they were unanimous in their fury and
equally unanimous in their composure, with so uniform a consistency that
one would have thought them to be under command.

1:33. Meantime Germanicus, while, as I have related, he was
collecting the taxes of Gaul, received news of the death of Augustus. He
was married to the granddaughter of Augustus, Agrippina, by whom he had
several children, and though he was himself the son of Drusus, brother of
Tiberius, and grandson of Augusta, he was troubled by the secret hatred
of his uncle and grandmother, the motives for which were the more
venomous because unjust. For the memory of Drusus was held in honour by
the Roman people, and they believed that had he obtained empire, he would
have restored freedom. Hence they regarded Germanicus with favour and
with the same hope. He was indeed a young man of unaspiring temper, and
of wonderful kindliness, contrasting strongly with the proud and
mysterious reserve that marked the conversation and the features of
Tiberius. Then, there were feminine jealousies, Livia feeling a
stepmother's bitterness towards Agrippina, and Agrippina herself too
being rather excitable, only her purity and love of her husband gave a
right direction to her otherwise imperious disposition.

1:34. But the nearer Germanicus was to the highest hope, the more
laboriously did he exert himself for Tiberius, and he made the
neighbouring Sequani and all the Belgic states swear obedience to him. On
hearing of the mutiny in the legions, he instantly went to the spot, and
met them outside the camp, eyes fixed on the ground, and seemingly
repentant. As soon as he entered the entrenchments, confused murmurs
became audible. Some men, seizing his hand under pretence of kissing it,
thrust his fingers into their mouths, that he might touch their toothless
gums; others showed him their limbs bowed with age. He ordered the throng
which stood near him, as it seemed a promiscuous gathering, to separate
itself into its military companies. They replied that they would hear
better as they were. The standards were then to be advanced, so that thus
at least the cohorts might be distinguished. The soldiers obeyed
reluctantly. Then beginning with a reverent mention of Augustus, he
passed on to the victories and triumphs of Tiberius, dwelling with
especial praise on his glorious achievements with those legions in
Germany. Next, he extolled the unity of Italy, the loyalty of Gaul, the
entire absence of turbulence or strife. He was heard in silence or with
but a slight murmur.

1:35. As soon as he touched on the mutiny and asked what had become
of soldierly obedience, of the glory of ancient discipline, whither they
had driven their tribunes and centurions, they all bared their bodies and
taunted him with the scars of their wounds and the marks of the lash. And
then with confused exclamations they spoke bitterly of the prices of
exemptions, of their scanty pay, of the severity of their tasks, with
special mention of the entrenchment, the fosse, the conveyance of fodder,
building-timber, firewood, and whatever else had to be procured from
necessity, or as a check on idleness in the camp. The fiercest clamour
arose from the veteran soldiers, who, as they counted their thirty
campaigns or more, implored him to relieve worn-out men, and not let them
die under the same hardships, but have an end of such harassing service,
and repose without beggary. Some even claimed the legacy of the Divine
Augustus, with words of good omen for Germanicus, and, should he wish for
empire, they showed themselves abundantly willing. Thereupon, as though
he were contracting the pollution of guilt, he leapt impetuously from the
tribunal. The men opposed his departure with their weapons, threatening
him repeatedly if he would not go back. But Germanicus protesting that he
would die rather than cast off his loyalty, plucked his sword from his
side, raised it aloft and was plunging it into his breast, when those
nearest him seized his hand and held it by force. The remotest and most
densely crowded part of the throng, and, what almost passes belief, some,
who came close up to him, urged him to strike the blow, and a soldier, by
name Calusidius, offered him a drawn sword, saying that it was sharper
than his own. Even in their fury, this seemed to them a savage act and
one of evil precedent, and there was a pause during which Caesar's
friends hurried him into his tent.

1:36. There they took counsel how to heal matters. For news was also
brought that the soldiers were preparing the despatch of envoys who were
to draw the upper army into their cause; that the capital of the Ubii was
marked out for destruction, and that hands with the stain of plunder on
them would soon be daring enough for the pillage of Gaul. The alarm was
heightened by the knowledge that the enemy was aware of the Roman mutiny,
and would certainly attack if the Rhine bank were undefended. Yet if the
auxiliary troops and allies were to be armed against the retiring
legions, civil war was in fact begun. Severity would be dangerous;
profuse liberality would be scandalous. Whether all or nothing were
conceded to the soldiery, the State was equally in jeopardy. Accordingly,
having weighed their plans one against each other, they decided that a
letter should be written in the prince's name, to the effect that full
discharge was granted to those who had served in twenty campaigns; that
there was a conditional release for those who had served sixteen, and
that they were to be retained under a standard with immunity from
everything except actually keeping off the enemy; that the legacies which
they had asked, were to be paid and doubled.

1:37. The soldiers perceived that all this was invented for the
occasion, and instantly pressed their demands. The discharge from service
was quickly arranged by the tribunes. Payment was put off till they
reached their respective winterquarters. The men of the fifth and
twenty-first legions refused to go till in the summer-camp where they
stood the money was made up out of the purses of Germanicus himself and
his friends, and paid in full. The first and twentieth legions were led
back by their officer Caecina to the canton of the Ubii, marching in
disgrace, since sums of money which had been extorted from the general
were carried among the eagles and standards. Germanicus went to the Upper
Army, and the second, thirteenth, and sixteenth legions, without any
delay, accepted from him the oath of allegiance. The fourteenth hesitated
a little, but their money and the discharge were offered even without
their demanding it.

1:38. Meanwhile there was an outbreak among the Chauci, begun by some
veterans of the mutinous legions on garrison duty. They were quelled for
a time by the instant execution of two soldiers. Such was the order of
Mennius, the camp- prefect, more as a salutary warning than as a legal
act. Then, when the commotion increased, he fled and having been
discovered, as his hiding place was now unsafe, he borrowed a resource
from audacity. "It was not," he told them, "the camp-prefect, it was
Germanicus, their general, it was Tiberius, their emperor, whom they were
insulting." At the same moment, overawing all resistance, he seized the
standard, faced round towards the river- bank, and exclaiming that
whoever left the ranks, he would hold as a deserter, he led them back
into their winter-quarters, disaffected indeed, but cowed.

1:39. Meanwhile envoys from the Senate had an interview with
Germanicus, who had now returned, at the Altar of the Ubii. Two legions,
the first and twentieth, with veterans discharged and serving under a
standard, were there in winter- quarters. In the bewilderment of terror
and conscious guilt they were penetrated by an apprehension that persons
had come at the Senate's orders to cancel the concessions they had
extorted by mutiny. And as it is the way with a mob to fix any charge,
however groundless, on some particular person, they reproached Manatius
Plancus, an ex-consul and the chief envoy, with being the author of the
Senate's decree. At midnight they began to demand the imperial standard
kept in Germanicus's quarters, and having rushed together to the
entrance, burst the door, dragged Caesar from his bed, and forced him by
menaces of death to give up the standard. Then roaming through the camp-
streets, they met the envoys, who on hearing of the tumult were hastening
to Germanicus. They loaded them with insults, and were on the point of
murdering them, Plancus especially, whose high rank had deterred him from
flight. In his peril he found safety only in the camp of the first
legion. There clasping the standards and the eagle, he sought to protect
himself under their sanctity. And had not the eagle-bearer, Calpurnius,
saved him from the worst violence, the blood of an envoy of the Roman
people, an occurrence rare even among our foes, would in a Roman camp
have stained the altars of the gods. At last, with the light of day, when
the general and the soldiers and the whole affair were clearly
recognised, Germanicus entered the camp, ordered Plancus to be conducted
to him, and received him on the tribunal. He then upbraided them with
their fatal infatuation, revived not so much by the anger of the soldiers
as by that of heaven, and explained the reasons of the envoys' arrival.
On the rights of ambassadors, on the dreadful and undeserved peril of
Plancus, and also on the disgrace into which the legion had brought
itself, he dwelt with the eloquence of pity, and while the throng was
confounded rather than appeased, he dismissed the envoys with an escort
of auxiliary cavalry.

1:40. Amid the alarm all condemned Germanicus for not
going to the Upper Army, where he might find obedience and help
against the rebels. "Enough and more than enough blunders," they said,
"had been made by granting discharges and money, indeed, by
conciliatory measures. Even if Germanicus held his own life cheap, why
should he keep a little son and a pregnant wife among madmen who
outraged every human right? Let these, at least, be restored safely to
their grandsire and to the State." When his wife spurned the notion,
protesting that she was a descendant of the Divine Augustus and could
face peril with no degenerate spirit, he at last embraced her and the
son of their love with many tears, and after long delay compelled her
to depart. Slowly moved along a pitiable procession of women, a
general's fugitive wife with a little son in her bosom, her friends'
wives weeping round her, as with her they were dragging themselves
from the camp. Not less sorrowful were those who remained.

1:41. There was no appearance of the triumphant general about
Germanicus, and he seemed to be in a conquered city rather than in his
own camp, while groans and wailings attracted the ears and looks even of
the soldiers. They came out of their tents, asking "what was that
mournful sound? What meant the sad sight? Here were ladies of rank, not a
centurion to escort them, not a soldier, no sign of a prince's wife, none
of the usual retinue. Could they be going to the Treveri, to be subjects
of the foreigner?" Then they felt shame and pity, and remembered his
father Agrippa, her grandfather Augustus, her father- in-law Drusus, her
own glory as a mother of children, her noble purity. And there was her
little child too, born in the camp, brought up amid the tents of the
legions, whom they used to call in soldiers' fashion, Caligula, because
he often wore the shoe so called, to win the men's goodwill. But nothing
moved them so much as jealousy towards the Treveri. They entreated,
stopped the way, that Agrippina might return and remain, some running to
meet her, while most of them went back to Germanicus. He, with a grief
and anger that were yet fresh, thus began to address the throng around
him -

1:42. "Neither wife nor son are dearer to me than my father and the
State. But he will surely have the protection of his own majesty, the
empire of Rome that of our other armies. My wife and children whom, were
it a question of your glory, I would willingly expose to destruction, I
now remove to a distance from your fury, so that whatever wickedness is
thereby threatened, may be expiated by my blood only, and that you may
not be made more guilty by the slaughter of a great-grandson of Augustus,
and the murder of a daughter-in-law of Tiberius. For what have you not
dared, what have you not profaned during these days? What name shall I
give to this gathering? Am I to call you soldiers, you who have beset
with entrenchments and arms your general's son, or citizens, when you
have trampled under foot the authority of the Senate? Even the rights of
public enemies, the sacred character of the ambassador, and the law of
nations have been violated by you. The Divine Julius once quelled an
army's mutiny with a single word by calling those who were renouncing
their military obedience 'citizens.' The Divine Augustus cowed the
legions who had fought at Actium with one look of his face. Though I am
not yet what they were, still, descended as I am from them, it would be a
strange and unworthy thing should I be spurned by the soldiery of Spain
or Syria. First and twentieth legions, you who received your standards
from Tiberius, you, men of the twentieth who have shared with me so many
battles and have been enriched with so many rewards, is not this a fine
gratitude with which you are repaying your general? Are these the tidings
which I shall have to carry to my father when he hears only joyful
intelligence from our other provinces, that his own recruits, his own
veterans are not satisfied with discharge or pay; that here only
centurions are murdered, tribunes driven away, envoys imprisoned, camps
and rivers stained with blood, while I am myself dragging on a precarious
existence amid those who hate me?

1:43. "Why, on the first day of our meeting, why did you, my friends,
wrest from me, in your blindness, the steel which I was preparing to
plunge into my breast? Better and more loving was the act of the man who
offered me the sword. At any rate I should have perished before I was as
yet conscious of all the disgraces of my army, while you would have
chosen a general who though he might allow my death to pass unpunished
would avenge the death of Varus and his three legions. Never indeed may
heaven suffer the Belgae, though they proffer their aid, to have the
glory and honour of having rescued the name of Rome and quelled the
tribes of Germany. It is thy spirit, Divine Augustus, now received into
heaven, thine image, father Drusus, and the remembrance of thee, which,
with these same soldiers who are now stimulated by shame and ambition,
should wipe out this blot and turn the wrath of civil strife to the
destruction of the foe. You too, in whose faces and in whose hearts I
perceive a change, if only you restore to the Senate their envoys, to the
emperor his due allegiance, to myself my wife and son, do you stand aloof
from pollution and separate the mutinous from among you. This will be a
pledge of your repentance, a guarantee of your loyalty."

1:44. Thereupon, as suppliants confessing that his reproaches were
true, they implored him to punish the guilty, pardon those who had erred,
and lead them against the enemy. And he was to recall his wife, to let
the nursling of the legions return and not be handed over as a hostage to
the Gauls. As to Agrippina's return, he made the excuse of her
approaching confinement and of winter. His son, he said, would come, and
the rest they might settle themselves. Away they hurried hither and
thither, altered men, and dragged the chief mutineers in chains to Caius
Caetronius commander of the first legion, who tried and punished them one
by one in the following fashion. In front of the throng stood the legions
with drawn swords. Each accused man was on a raised platform and was
pointed out by a tribune. If they shouted out that he was guilty, he was
thrown headlong and cut to pieces. The soldiers gloated over the
bloodshed as though it gave them absolution. Nor did Caesar check them,
seeing that without any order from himself the same men were responsible
for all the cruelty and all the odium of the deed. The example was
followed by the veterans, who were soon afterwards sent into Raetia,
nominally to defend the province against a threatened invasion of the
Suevi but really that they might tear themselves from a camp stamped with
the horror of a dreadful remedy no less than with the memory of guilt.
Then the general revised the list of centurions. Each, at his summons,
stated his name, his rank, his birthplace, the number of his campaigns,
what brave deeds he had done in battle, his military rewards, if any. If
the tribunes and the legion commended his energy and good behaviour, he
retained his rank; where they unanimously charged him with rapacity or
cruelty, he was dismissed the service.

1:45. Quiet being thus restored for the present, a no less formidable
difficulty remained through the turbulence of the fifth and twenty-first
legions, who were in winter quarters sixty miles away at Old Camp, as the
place was called. These, in fact, had been the first to begin the mutiny,
and the most atrocious deeds had been committed by their hands. Unawed by
the punishment of their comrades, and unmoved by their contrition, they
still retained their resentment. Caesar accordingly proposed to send an
armed fleet with some of our allies down the Rhine, resolved to make war
on them should they reject his authority.

1:46. At Rome, meanwhile, when the result of affairs in Illyrium was
not yet known, and men had heard of the commotion among the German
legions, the citizens in alarm reproached Tiberius for the hypocritical
irresolution with which he was befooling the senate and the people,
feeble and disarmed as they were, while the soldiery were all the time in
revolt, and could not be quelled by the yet imperfectly-matured authority
of two striplings. "He ought to have gone himself and confronted with his
imperial majesty those who would have soon yielded, when they once saw a
sovereign of long experience, who was the supreme dispenser of rigour or
of bounty. Could Augustus, with the feebleness of age on him, so often
visit Germany, and is Tiberius, in the vigour of life, to sit in the
Senate and criticise its members' words? He had taken good care that
there should be slavery at Rome; he should now apply some soothing
medicine to the spirit of soldiers, that they might be willing to endure
peace."

1:47. Notwithstanding these remonstrances, it was the inflexible
purpose of Tiberius not to quit the head-quarters of empire or to imperil
himself and the State. Indeed, many conflicting thoughts troubled him.
The army in Germany was the stronger; that in Pannonia the nearer; the
first was supported by all the strength of Gaul; the latter menaced
Italy. Which was he to prefer, without the fear that those whom he
slighted would be infuriated by the affront? But his sons might alike
visit both, and not compromise the imperial dignity, which inspired the
greatest awe at a distance. There was also an excuse for mere youths
referring some matters to their father, with the possibility that he
could conciliate or crush those who resisted Germanicus or Drusus. What
resource remained, if they despised the emperor? However, as if on the
eve of departure, he selected his attendants, provided his camp-equipage,
and prepared a fleet; then winter and matters of business were the
various pretexts with which he amused, first, sensible men, then the
populace, last, and longest of all, the provinces.

1:48. Germanicus meantime, though he had concentrated his army and
prepared vengeance against the mutineers, thought that he ought still to
allow them an interval, in case they might, with the late warning before
them, regard their safety. He sent a despatch to Caecina, which said that
he was on the way with a strong force, and that, unless they forestalled
his arrival by the execution of the guilty, he would resort to an
indiscriminate massacre. Caecina read the letter confidentially to the
eagle and standardbearers, and to all in the camp who were least tainted
by disloyalty, and urged them to save the whole army from disgrace, and
themselves from destruction. "In peace," he said, "the merits of a man's
case are carefully weighed; when war bursts on us, innocent and guilty
alike perish." Upon this, they sounded those whom they thought best for
their purpose, and when they saw that a majority of their legions
remained loyal, at the commander's suggestion they fixed a time for
falling with the sword on all the vilest and foremost of the mutineers.
Then, at a mutually given signal, they rushed into the tents, and
butchered the unsuspecting men, none but those in the secret knowing what
was the beginning or what was to be the end of the slaughter.

1:49. The scene was a contrast to all civil wars which have ever
occurred. It was not in battle, it was not from opposing camps, it was
from those same dwellings where day saw them at their common meals, night
resting from labour, that they divided themselves into two factions, and
showered on each other their missiles. Uproar, wounds, bloodshed, were
everywhere visible; the cause was a mystery. All else was at the disposal
of chance. Even some loyal men were slain, for, on its being once
understood who were the objects of fury, some of the worst mutineers too
had seized on weapons. Neither commander nor tribune was present to
control them; the men were allowed license and vengeance to their heart's
content. Soon afterwards Germanicus entered the camp, and exclaiming with
a flood of tears, that this was destruction rather than remedy, ordered
the bodies to be burnt. Even then their savage spirit was seized with
desire to march against the enemy, as an atonement for their frenzy, and
it was felt that the shades of their fellow-soldiers could be appeased
only by exposing such impious breasts to honourable scars. Caesar
followed up the enthusiasm of the men, and having bridged over the Rhine,
he sent across it 12,000 from the legions, with six-and-twenty allied
cohorts, and eight squadrons of cavalry, whose discipline had been
without a stain during the mutiny.

1:50. There was exultation among the Germans, not far
off, as long as we were detained by the public mourning for the loss
of Augustus, and then by our dissensions. But the Roman general in a
forced march, cut through the Caesian forest and the barrier which had
been begun by Tiberius, and pitched his camp on this barrier, his
front and rear being defended by intrenchments, his flanks by timber
barricades. He then penetrated some forest passes but little known,
and, as there were two routes, he deliberated whether he should pursue
the short and ordinary route, or that which was more difficult
unexplored, and consequently unguarded by the enemy. He chose the
longer way, and hurried on every remaining preparation, for his scouts
had brought word that among the Germans it was a night of festivity,
with games, and one of their grand banquets. Caecina had orders to
advance with some light cohorts, and to clear away any obstructions
from the woods. The legions followed at a moderate interval. They were
helped by a night of bright starlight, reached the villages of the
Marsi, and threw their pickets round the enemy, who even then were
stretched on beds or at their tables, without the least fear, or any
sentries before their camp, so complete was their carelessness and
disorder; and of war indeed there was no apprehension. Peace it
certainly was not - merely the languid and heedless ease of
half-intoxicated people.

1:51. Caesar, to spread devastation widely, divided his eager legions
into four columns, and ravaged a space of fifty miles with fire and
sword. Neither sex nor age moved his compassion. Everything, sacred or
profane, the temple too of Tamfana, as they called it, the special resort
of all those tribes, was levelled to the ground. There was not a wound
among our soldiers, who cut down a half-asleep, an unarmed, or a
straggling foe. The Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes, were roused by this
slaughter, and they beset the forest passes through which the army had to
return. The general knew this, and he marched, prepared both to advance
and to fight. Part of the cavalry, and some of the auxiliary cohorts led
the van; then came the first legion, and, with the baggage in the centre,
the men of the twenty-first closed up the left, those of the fifth, the
right flank. The twentieth legion secured the rear, and, next, were the
rest of the allies. Meanwhile the enemy moved not till the army began to
defile in column through the woods, then made slight skirmishing attacks
on its flanks and van, and with his whole force charged the rear. The
light cohorts were thrown into confusion by the dense masses of the
Germans, when Caesar rode up to the men of the twentieth legion, and in a
loud voice exclaimed that this was the time for wiping out the mutiny.
"Advance," he said, "and hasten to turn your guilt into glory." This
fired their courage, and at a single dash they broke through the enemy,
and drove him back with great slaughter into the open country. At the
same moment the troops of the van emerged from the woods and intrenched a
camp. After this their march was uninterrupted, and the soldiery, with
the confidence of recent success, and forgetful of the past, were placed
in winter- quarters.

1:52. The news was a source of joy and also of anxiety to Tiberius.
He rejoiced that the mutiny was crushed, but the fact that Germanicus had
won the soldiers' favour by lavishing money, and promptly granting the
discharge, as well as his fame as a soldier, annoyed him. Still, he
brought his achievements under the notice of the Senate, and spoke much
of his greatness in language elaborated for effect, more so than could be
believed to come from his inmost heart. He bestowed a briefer praise on
Drusus, and on the termination of the disturbance in Illyricum, but he
was more earnest, and his speech more hearty. And he confirmed, too, in
the armies of Pannonia all the concessions of Germanicus.

1:53. That same year Julia ended her days. For her profligacy she had
formerly been confined by her father Augustus in the island of
Pandateria, and then in the town of the Regini on the shores of the
straits of Sicily. She had been the wife of Tiberius while Caius and
Lucius Caesar were in their glory, and had disdained him as an unequal
match. This was Tiberius's special reason for retiring to Rhodes. When he
obtained the empire, he left her in banishment and disgrace, deprived of
all hope after the murder of Postumus Agrippa, and let her perish by a
lingering death of destitution, with the idea that an obscurity would
hang over her end from the length of her exile. He had a like motive for
cruel vengeance on Sempronius Gracchus, a man of noble family, of shrewd
understanding, and a perverse eloquence, who had seduced this same Julia
when she was the wife of Marcus Agrippa. And this was not the end of the
intrigue. When she had been handed over to Tiberius, her persistent
paramour inflamed her with disobedience and hatred towards her husband;
and a letter which Julia wrote to her father, Augustus, inveighing
against Tiberius, was supposed to be the composition of Gracchus. He was
accordingly banished to Cercina, where he endured an exile of fourteen
years. Then the soldiers who were sent to slay him, found him on a
promontory, expecting no good. On their arrival, he begged a brief
interval in which to give by letter his last instructions to his wife
Alliaria, and then offered his neck to the executioners, dying with a
courage not unworthy of the Sempronian name, which his degenerate life
had dishonoured. Some have related that these soldiers were not sent from
Rome, but by Lucius Asprenas, proconsul of Africa, on the authority of
Tiberius, who had vainly hoped that the infamy of the murder might be
shifted on Asprenas.

1:54. The same year witnessed the establishment of religious
ceremonies in a new priesthood of the brotherhood of the Augustales, just
as in former days Titus Tatius, to retain the rites of the Sabines, had
instituted the Titian brotherhood. Twenty-one were chosen by lot from the
chief men of the State; Tiberius, Drusus, Claudius, and Germanicus, were
added to the number. The Augustal game's which were then inaugurated,
were disturbed by quarrels arising out of rivalry between the actors.
Augustus had shown indulgence to the entertainment by way of humouring
Maecenas's extravagant passion for Bathyllus, nor did he himself dislike
such amusements, and he thought it citizenlike to mingle in the pleasures
of the populace. Very different was the tendency of Tiberius's character.
But a people so many years indulgently treated, he did not yet venture to
put under harsher control.

1:55. In the consulship of Drusus Caesar and Caius Norbanus,
Germanicus had a triumph decreed him, though war still lasted. And though
it was for the summer campaign that he was most vigorously preparing, he
anticipated it by a sudden inroad on the Chatti in the beginning of
spring. There had, in fact, sprung up a hope of the enemy being divided
between Arminius and Segestes, famous, respectively, for treachery and
loyalty towards us. Arminius was the disturber of Germany. Segestes often
revealed the fact that a rebellion was being organized, more especially
at that last banquet after which they rushed to arms, and he urged Varus
to arrest himself and Arminius and all the other chiefs, assuring him
that the people would attempt nothing if the leading men were removed,
and that he would then have an opportunity of sifting accusations and
distinguishing the innocent. But Varus fell by fate and by the sword of
Arminius, with whom Segestes, though dragged into war by the unanimous
voice of the nation, continued to be at feud, his resentment being
heightened by personal motives, as Arminius had married his daughter who
was betrothed to another. With a son-in-law detested, and fathers- in-law
also at enmity, what are bonds of love between united hearts became with
bitter foes incentives to fury.

1:56. Germanicus accordingly gave Caecina four legions, five thousand
auxiliaries, with some hastily raised levies from the Germans dwelling on
the left bank of the Rhine. He was himself at the head of an equal number
of legions and twice as many allies. Having established a fort on the
site of his father's entrenchments on Mount Taunus he hurried his troops
in quick marching order against the Chatti, leaving Lucius Apronius to
direct works connected with roads and bridges. With a dry season and
comparatively shallow streams, a rare circumstance in that climate, he
had accomplished, without obstruction, rapid march, and he feared for his
return heavy rains and swollen rivers. But so suddenly did he come on the
Chatti that all the helpless from age or sex were at once captured or
slaughtered. Their able-bodied men had swum across the river Adrana, and
were trying to keep back the Romans as they were commencing a bridge.
Subsequently they were driven back by missiles and arrows, and having in
vain attempted for peace, some took refuge with Germanicus, while the
rest leaving their cantons and villages dispersed themselves in their
forests. After burning Mattium, the capital of the tribe, and ravaging
the open country, Germanicus marched back towards the Rhine, the enemy
not daring to harass the rear of the retiring army, which was his usual
practice whenever he fell back by way of stratagem rather than from
panic. It had been the intention of the Cherusci to help the Chatti; but
Caecina thoroughly cowed them, carrying his arms everywhere, and the
Marsi who ventured to engage him, he repulsed in a successful
battle.

1:57. Not long after envoys came from Segestes, imploring aid against
the violence of his fellow-countrymen, by whom he was hemmed in, and with
whom Arminius had greater influence, because he counselled war. For with
barbarians, the more eager a man's daring, the more does he inspire
confidence, and the more highly is he esteemed in times of revolution.
With the envoys Segestes had associated his son, by name Segimundus, but
the youth hung back from a consciousness of guilt. For in the year of the
revolt of Germany he had been appointed a priest at the altar of the
Ubii, and had rent the sacred garlands, and fled to the rebels. Induced,
however, to hope for mercy from Rome, he brought his father's message; he
was graciously received and sent with an escort to the Gallic bank of the
Rhine. It was now worth while for Germanicus to march back his army. A
battle was fought against the besiegers and Segestes was rescued with a
numerous band of kinsfolk and dependents. In the number were some women
of rank; among them, the wife of Arminius, who was also the daughter of
Segestes, but who exhibited the spirit of her husband rather than of her
father, subdued neither to tears nor to the tones of a suppliant, her
hands tightly clasped within her bosom, and eyes which dwelt on her hope
of offspring. The spoils also taken in the defeat of Varus were brought
in, having been given as plunder to many of those who were then being
surrendered.

1:58. Segestes too was there in person, a stately figure, fearless in
the remembrance of having been a faithful ally. His speech was to this
effect. "This is not my first day of steadfast loyalty towards the Roman
people. From the time that the Divine Augustus gave me the citizenship, I
have chosen my friends and foes with an eye to your advantage, not from
hatred of my fatherland (for traitors are detested even by those whom
they prefer) but because I held that Romans and Germans have the same
interests, and that peace is better than war. And therefore I denounced
to Varus, who then commanded your army, Arminius, the ravisher of my
daughter, the violater of your treaty. I was put off by that dilatory
general, and, as I found but little protection in the laws, I urged him
to arrest myself, Arminius, and his accomplices. That night is my
witness; would that it had been my last. What followed, may be deplored
rather than defended. However, I threw Arminius into chains and I endured
to have them put on myself by his partisans. And as soon as give
opportunity, I show my preference for the old over the new, for peace
over commotion, not to get a reward, but that I may clear myself from
treachery and be at the same time a fit mediator for a German people,
should they choose repentance rather than ruin, For the youth and error
of my son I entreat forgiveness. As for my daughter, I admit that it is
by compulsion she has been brought here. It will be for you to consider
which fact weighs most with you, that she is with child by Arminius or
that she owes her being to me." Caesar in a gracious reply promised
safety to his children and kinsfolk and a home for himself in the old
province. He then led back the army and received on the proposal of
Tiberius the title of Imperator. The wife of Arminius gave birth to a
male child; the boy, who was brought up at Ravenna, soon afterwards
suffered an insult, which at the proper time I shall relate.

1:59. The report of the surrender and kind reception of Segestes,
when generally known, was heard with hope or grief according as men
shrank from war or desired it. Arminius, with his naturally furious
temper, was driven to frenzy by the seizure of his wife and the
foredooming to slavery of his wife's unborn child. He flew hither and
thither among the Cherusci, demanding "war against Segestes, war against
Caesar." And he refrained not from taunts. "Noble the father," he would
say, "mighty the general, brave the army which, with such strength, has
carried off one weak woman. Before me, three legions, three commanders
have fallen. Not by treachery, not against pregnant women, but openly
against armed men do I wage war. There are still to be seen in the groves
of Germany the Roman standards which I hung up to our country's gods. Let
Segestes dwell on the conquered bank; let him restore to his son his
priestly office; one thing there is which Germans will never thoroughly
excuse, their having seen between the Elbe and the Rhine the Roman rods,
axes, and toga. Other nations in their ignorance of Roman rule, have no
experience of punishments, know nothing of tributes, and, as we have
shaken them off, as the great Augustus, ranked among dieties, and his
chosen heir Tiberius, departed from us, baffled, let us not quail before
an inexperienced stripling, before a mutinous army. If you prefer your
fatherland, your ancestors, your ancient life to tyrants and to new
colonies, follow as your leader Arminius to glory and to freedom rather
than Segestes to ignominious servitude."

1:60. This language roused not only the Cherusci but the
neighbouring tribes and drew to their side Inguiomerus, the uncle of
Arminius, who had long been respected by the Romans. This increased
Caesar's alarm. That the war might not burst in all its fury on one
point, he sent Caecina through the Bructeri to the river Amisia with
forty Roman cohorts to distract the enemy, while the cavalry was led
by its commander Pedo by the territories of the Frisii. Germanicus
himself put four legions on shipboard and conveyed them through the
lakes, and the infantry, cavalry, and fleet met simultaneously at the
river already mentioned. The Chauci, on promising aid, were associated
with us in military fellowship. Lucius Stertinius was despatched by
Germanicus with a flying column and routed the Bructeri as they were
burning their possessions, and amid the carnage and plunder, found the
eagle of the nineteenth legion which had been lost with Varus. The
troops were then marched to the furthest frontier of the Bructeri, and
all the country between the rivers Amisia and Luppia was ravaged, not
far from the forest of Teutoburgium where the remains of Varus and his
legions were said to lie unburied.

1:61. Germanicus upon this was seized with an eager longing to pay
the last honour to those soldiers and their general, while the whole army
present was moved to compassion by the thought of their kinsfolk and
friends, and, indeed, of the calamities of wars and the lot of mankind.
Having sent on Caecina in advance to reconnoitre the obscure
forest-passes, and to raise bridges and causeways over watery swamps and
treacherous plains, they visited the mournful scenes, with their horrible
sights and associations. Varus's first camp with its wide circumference
and the measurements of its central space clearly indicated the handiwork
of three legions. Further on, the partially fallen rampart and the
shallow fosse suggested the inference that it was a shattered remnant of
the army which had there taken up a position. In the centre of the field
were the whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground,
strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay fragments of weapons and
limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to trunks of
trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars, on which they
had immolated tribunes and first-rank centurions. Some survivors of the
disaster who had escaped from the battle or from captivity, described how
this was the spot where the officers fell, how yonder the eagles were
captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound, where too by the
stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death. They
pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his
army, the number of gibbets for the captives, the pits for the living,
and how in his exultation he insulted the standards and eagles.

1:62. And so the Roman army now on the spot, six years after the
disaster, in grief and anger, began to bury the bones of the three
legions, not a soldier knowing whether he was interring the relics of a
relative or a stranger, but looking on all as kinsfolk and of their own
blood, while their wrath rose higher than ever against the foe. In
raising the barrow Caesar laid the first sod, rendering thus a most
welcome honour to the dead, and sharing also in the sorrow of those
present. This Tiberius did not approve, either interpreting unfavourably
every act of Germanicus, or because he thought that the spectacle of the
slain and unburied made the army slow to fight and more afraid of the
enemy, and that a general invested with the augurate and its very ancient
ceremonies ought not to have polluted himself with funeral rites.

1:63. Germanicus, however, pursued Arminius as he fell back into
trackless wilds, and as soon as he had the opportunity, ordered his
cavalry to sally forth and scour the plains occupied by the enemy.
Arminius having bidden his men to concentrate themselves and keep close
to the woods, suddenly wheeled round, and soon gave those whom he had
concealed in the forest passes the signal to rush to the attack.
Thereupon our cavalry was thrown into disorder by this new force, and
some cohorts in reserve were sent, which, broken by the shock of flying
troops, increased the panic. They were being pushed into a swamp, well
known to the victorious assailants, perilous to men unacquainted with it,
when Caesar led forth his legions in battle array. This struck terror
into the enemy and gave confidence to our men, and they separated without
advantage to either. Soon afterwards Germanicus led back his army to the
Amisia, taking his legions by the fleet, as he had brought them up. Part
of the cavalry was ordered to make for the Rhine along the sea-coast.
Caecina, who commanded a division of his own, was advised, though he was
returning by a route which he knew, to pass Long Bridges with all
possible speed. This was a narrow road amid vast swamps, which had
formerly been constructed by Lucius Domitius; on every side were
quagmires of thick clinging mud, or perilous with streams. Around were
woods on a gradual slope, which Arminius now completely occupied, as soon
as by a short route and quick march he had outstripped troops heavily
laden with baggage and arms. As Caecina was in doubt how he could
possibly replace bridges which were ruinous from age, and at the same
time hold back the enemy, he resolved to encamp on the spot, that some
might begin the repair and others the attack.

1:64. The barbarians attempted to break through the outposts and to
throw themselves on the engineering parties, which they harassed, pacing
round them and continually charging them. There was a confused din from
the men at work and the combatants. Everything alike was unfavourable to
the Romans, the place with its deep swamps, insecure to the foot and
slippery as one advanced, limbs burdened with coats of mail, and the
impossibility of aiming their javelins amid the water. The Cherusci, on
the other hand, were familiar with fighting in fens; they had huge
frames, and lances long enough to inflict wounds even at a distance.
Night at last released the legions, which were now wavering, from a
disastrous engagement. The Germans whom success rendered unwearied,
without even then taking any rest, turned all the streams which rose from
the slopes of the surrounding hills into the lands beneath. The ground
being thus flooded and the completed portion of our works submerged, the
soldiers' labour was doubled. This was Caecina's fortieth campaign as a
subordinate or a commander, and, with such experience of success and
peril, he was perfectly fearless. As he thought over future
possibilities, he could devise no plan but to keep the enemy within the
woods, till the wounded and the more encumbered troops were in advance.
For between the hills and the swamps there stretched a plain which would
admit of an extended line. The legions had their assigned places, the
fifth on the right wing, the twenty-first on the left, the men of the
first to lead the van, the twentieth to repel pursuers.

1:65. It was a restless night for different reasons, the barbarians
in their festivity filling the valleys under the hills and the echoing
glens with merry song or savage shouts, while in the Roman camp were
flickering fires, broken exclamations, and the men lay scattered along
the intrenchments or wandered from tent to tent, wakeful rather than
watchful. A ghastly dream appalled the general. He seemed to see
Quintilius Varus, covered with blood, rising out of the swamps, and to
hear him, as it were, calling to him, but he did not, as he imagined,
obey the call; he even repelled his hand, as he stretched it over him. At
daybreak the legions, posted on the wings, from panic or perversity,
deserted their position and hastily occupied a plain beyond the morass.
Yet Arminius, though free to attack, did not at the moment rush out on
them. But when the baggage was clogged in the mud and in the fosses, the
soldiers around it in disorder, the array of the standards in confusion,
every one in selfish haste and all ears deaf to the word of command he
ordered the Germans to charge, exclaiming again and again, "Behold a
Varus and legions once more entangled in Varus's fate." As he spoke, he
cut through the column with some picked men, inflicting wounds chiefly on
the horses. Staggering in their blood on the slippery marsh, they shook
off their riders, driving hither and thither all in their way, and
trampling on the fallen. The struggle was hottest round the eagles, which
could neither be carried in the face of the storm of missiles, nor
planted in the miry soil. Caecina, while he was keeping up the battle,
fell from his horse, which was pierced under him, and was being hemmed
in, when the first legion threw itself in the way. The greed of the foe
helped him, for they left the slaughter to secure the spoil, and the
legions, towards evening, struggled on to open and firm ground. Nor did
this end their miseries. Entrenchments had to be thrown up, materials
sought for earthworks, while the army had lost to a great extent their
implements for digging earth and cutting turf. There were no tents for
the rank and file, no comforts for the wounded. As they shared their
food, soiled by mire or blood, they bewailed the darkness with its awful
omen, and the one day which yet remained to so many thousand men.

1:66. It chanced that a horse, which had broken its halter and
wandered wildly in fright at the uproar, overthrew some men against whom
it dashed. Thence arose such a panic, from the belief that the Germans
had burst into the camp, that all rushed to the gates. Of these the
decuman gate was the point chiefly sought, as it was furthest from the
enemy and safer for flight. Caecina, having ascertained that the alarm
was groundless, yet being unable to stop or stay the soldiers by
authority or entreaties or even by force, threw himself to the earth in
the gateway, and at last by an appeal to their pity, as they would have
had to pass over the body of their commander, closed the way. At the same
moment the tribunes and the centurions convinced them that it was a false
alarm.

1:67. Having then assembled them at his headquarters, and ordered
them to hear his words in silence, he reminded them of the urgency of the
crisis. "Their safety," he said, "lay in their arms, which they must,
however, use with discretion, and they must remain within the
entrenchments, till the enemy approached closer, in the hope of storming
them; then, there must be a general sortie; by that sortie the Rhine
might be reached. Whereas if they fled, more forests, deeper swamps, and
a savage foe awaited them; but if they were victorious, glory and renown
would be theirs." He dwelt on all that was dear to them at home, all that
testified to their honour in the camp, without any allusion to disaster.
Next he handed over the horses, beginning with his own, of the officers
and tribunes, to the bravest fighters in the army, quite impartially,
that these first, and then the infantry, might charge the enemy.

1:68. There was as much restlessness in the German host with its
hopes, its eager longings, and the conflicting opinions of its chiefs.
Arminius advised that they should allow the Romans to quit their
position, and, when they had quitted it, again surprise them in swampy
and intricate ground. Inguiomerus, with fiercer counsels, heartily
welcome to barbarians, was for beleaguering the entrenchment in armed
array, as to storm them would, he said, be easy, and there would be more
prisoners and the booty unspoilt. So at daybreak they trampled in the
fosses, flung hurdles into them, seized the upper part of the breastwork,
where the troops were thinly distributed and seemingly paralysed by fear.
When they were fairly within the fortifications, the signal was given to
the cohorts, and the horns and trumpets sounded. Instantly, with a shout
and sudden rush, our men threw themselves on the German rear, with
taunts, that here were no woods or swamps, but that they were on equal
ground, with equal chances. The sound of trumpets, the gleam of arms,
which were so unexpected, burst with all the greater effect on the enemy,
thinking only, as they were, of the easy destruction of a few half-armed
men, and they were struck down, as unprepared for a reverse as they had
been elated by success. Arminius and Inguiomerus fled from the battle,
the first unhurt, the other severely wounded. Their followers were
slaughtered, as long as our fury and the light of day lasted. It was not
till night that the legions returned, and though more wounds and the same
want of provisions distressed them, yet they found strength, healing,
sustenance, everything indeed, in their victory.

1:69. Meanwhile a rumour had spread that our army was cut off, and
that a furious German host was marching on Gaul. And had not Agrippina
prevented the bridge over the Rhine from being destroyed, some in their
cowardice would have dared that base act. A woman of heroic spirit, she
assumed during those days the duties of a general, and distributed
clothes or medicine among the soldiers, as they were destitute or
wounded. According to Caius Plinius, the historian of the German wars,
she stood at the extremity of the bridge, and bestowed praise and thanks
on the returning legions. This made a deep impression on the mind of
Tiberius. "Such zeal," he thought, "could not be guileless; it was not
against a foreign foe that she was thus courting the soldiers. Generals
had nothing left them when a woman went among the companies, attended the
standards, ventured on bribery, as though it showed but slight ambition
to parade her son in a common soldier's uniform, and wish him to be
called Caesar Caligula. Agrippina had now more power with the armies than
officers, than generals. A woman had quelled a mutiny which the
sovereign's name could not check." All this was inflamed and aggravated
by Sejanus, who, with his thorough comprehension of the character of
Tiberius, sowed for a distant future hatreds which the emperor might
treasure up and might exhibit when fully matured.

1:70. Of the legions which he had conveyed by ship,
Germanicus gave the second and fourteenth to Publius Vitellius, to be
marched by land, so that the fleet might sail more easily over a sea
full of shoals, or take the ground more lightly at the ebb-tide.
Vitellius at first pursued his route without interruption, having a
dry shore, or the waves coming in gently. After a while, through the
force of the north wind and the equinoctial season, when the sea
swells to its highest, his army was driven and tossed hither and
thither. The country too was flooded; sea, shore, fields presented one
aspect, nor could the treacherous quicksands be distinguished from
solid ground or shallows from deep water. Men were swept away by the
waves or sucked under by eddies; beasts of burden, baggage, lifeless
bodies floated about and blocked their way. The companies were mingled
in confusion, now with the breast, now with the head only above water,
sometimes losing their footing and parted from their comrades or
drowned. The voice of mutual encouragement availed not against the
adverse force of the waves. There was nothing to distinguish the brave
from the coward, the prudent from the careless, forethought from
chance; the same strong power swept everything before it. At last
Vitellius struggled out to higher ground and led his men up to it.
There they passed the night, without necessary food, without fire,
many of them with bare or bruised limbs, in a plight as pitiable as
that of men besieged by an enemy. For such, at least, have the
opportunity of a glorious death, while here was destruction without
honour. Daylight restored land to their sight, and they pushed their
way to the river Visurgis, where Caesar had arrived with the fleet.
The legions then embarked, while a rumour was flying about that they
were drowned. Nor was there a belief in their safety till they saw
Caesar and the army returned.

1:71. By this time Stertinius, who had been despatched to receive the
surrender of Segimerus, brother of Segestes, had conducted the chief,
together with his son, to the canton of the Ubii. Both were pardoned,
Segimerus readily, the son with some hesitation, because it was said that
he had insulted the corpse of Quintilius Varus. Meanwhile Gaul, Spain,
and Italy vied in repairing the losses of the army, offering whatever
they had at hand, arms, horses, gold. Germanicus having praised their
zeal, took only for the war their arms and horses, and relieved the
soldiers out of his own purse. And that he might also soften the
remembrance of the disaster by kindness, he went round to the wounded,
applauded the feats of soldier after soldier, examined their wounds,
raised the hopes of one, the ambition of another, and the spirits of all
by his encouragement and interest, thus strengthening their ardour for
himself and for battle.

1:72. That year triumphal honours were decreed to Aulus Caecina,
Lucius Apronius, Caius Silius for their achievements under Germanicus.
The title of "father of his country," which the people had so often
thrust on him, Tiberius refused, nor would he allow obedience to be sworn
to his enactments, though the Senate voted it, for he said repeatedly
that all human things were uncertain, and that the more he had obtained,
the more precarious was his position. But he did not thereby create a
belief in his patriotism, for he had revived the law of treason, the name
of which indeed was known in ancient times, though other matters came
under its jurisdiction, such as the betrayal of an army, or seditious
stirring up of the people, or, in short, any corrupt act by which a man
had impaired "the majesty of the people of Rome." Deeds only were liable
to accusation; words went unpunished. It was Augustus who first, under
colour of this law, applied legal inquiry to libellous writings provoked,
as he had been, by the licentious freedom with which Cassius Severus had
defamed men and women of distinction in his insulting satires. Soon
afterwards, Tiberius, when consulted by Pompeius Macer, the praetor, as
to whether prosecutions for treason should be revived, replied that the
laws must be enforced. He too had been exasperated by the publication of
verses of uncertain authorship, pointed at his cruelty, his arrogance,
and his dissensions with his mother.

1:73. It will not be uninteresting if I relate in the cases of
Falanius and Rubrius, Roman knights of moderate fortune, the first
experiments at such accusations, in order to explain the origin of a most
terrible scourge, how by Tiberius's cunning it crept in among us, how
subsequently it was checked, finally, how it burst into flame and
consumed everything. Against Falanius it was alleged by his accuser that
he had admitted among the votaries of Augustus, who in every great house
were associated into a kind of brotherhood, one Cassius, a buffoon of
infamous life, and that he had also in selling his gardens included in
the sale a statue of Augustus. Against Rubrius the charge was that he had
violated by perjury the divinity of Augustus. When this was known to
Tiberius, he wrote to the consuls "that his father had not had a place in
heaven decreed to him, that the honour might be turned to the destruction
of the citizens. Cassius, the actor, with men of the same profession,
used to take part in the games which had been consecrated by his mother
to the memory of Augustus. Nor was it contrary to the religion of the
State for the emperor's image, like those of other deities, to be added
to a sale of gardens and houses. As to the oath, the thing ought to be
considered as if the man had deceived Jupiter. Wrongs done to the gods
were the gods' concern."

1:74. Not long afterwards, Granius Marcellus, proconsul of Bithynia,
was accused of treason by his quaestor, Caepio Crispinus, and the charge
was supported by Romanus Hispo. Crispinus then entered on a line of life
afterwards rendered notorious by the miseries of the age and men's
shamelessness. Needy, obscure, and restless, he wormed himself by
stealthy informations into the confidence of a vindictive prince, and
soon imperilled all the most distinguished citizens; and having thus
gained influence with one, hatred from all besides, he left an example in
following which beggars became wealthy, the insignificant, formidable,
and brought ruin first on others, finally on themselves. He alleged
against Marcellus that he had made some disrespectful remarks about
Tiberius, a charge not to be evaded, inasmuch as the accuser selected the
worst features of the emperor's character and grounded his case on them.
The things were true, and so were believed to have been said. Hispo added
that Marcellus had placed his own statue above those of the Caesars, and
had set the bust of Tiberius on another statue from which he had struck
off the head of Augustus. At this the emperor's wrath blazed forth, and,
breaking through his habitual silence, he exclaimed that in such a case
he would himself too give his vote openly on oath, that the rest might be
under the same obligation. There lingered even then a few signs of
expiring freedom. And so Cneius Piso asked, "In what order will you vote,
Caesar? If first, I shall know what to follow; if last, I fear that I may
differ from you unwillingly." Tiberius was deeply moved, and repenting of
the outburst, all the more because of its thoughtlessness, he quietly
allowed the accused to be acquitted of the charges of treason. As for the
question of extortion, it was referred to a special commission.

1:75. Not satisfied with judicial proceedings in the Senate, the
emperor would sit at one end of the Praetor's tribunal, but so as not to
displace him from the official seat. Many decisions were given in his
presence, in opposition to improper influence and the solicitations of
great men. This, though it promoted justice, ruined freedom. Pius
Aurelius, for example, a senator, complained that the foundations of his
house had been weakened by the pressure of a public road and aqueduct,
and he appealed to the Senate for assistance. He was opposed by the
praetors of the treasury, but the emperor helped him, and paid him the
value of his house, for he liked to spend money on a good purpose, a
virtue which he long retained, when he cast off all others. To Propertius
Celer, an ex- praetor, who sought because of his indigence to be excused
from his rank as a senator, he gave a million sesterces, having
ascertained that he had inherited poverty. He bade others, who attempted
the same, prove their case to the Senate, as from his love of strictness
he was harsh even where he acted on right grounds. Consequently every one
else preferred silence and poverty to confession and relief.

1:76. In the same year the Tiber, swollen by continuous rains,
flooded the level portions of the city. Its subsidence was followed by a
destruction of buildings and of life. Thereupon Asinius Gallus proposed
to consult the Sibylline books. Tiberius refused, veiling in obscurity
the divine as well as the human. However, the devising of means to
confine the river was intrusted to Ateius Capito and Lucius Arruntius.
Achaia and Macedonia, on complaining of their burdens, were, it was
decided, to be relieved for a time from proconsular government and to be
transferred to the emperor. Drusus presided over a show of gladiators
which he gave in his own name and in that of his brother Germanicus, for
he gloated intensely over bloodshed, however cheap its victims. This was
alarming to the populace, and his father had, it was said, rebuked him.
Why Tiberius kept away from the spectacle was variously explained.
According to some, it was his loathing of a crowd, according to others,
his gloomy temper, and a fear of contrast with the gracious presence of
Augustus. I cannot believe that he deliberately gave his son the
opportunity of displaying his ferocity and provoking the people's
disgust, though even this was said.

1:77. Meanwhile the unruly tone of the theatre which first showed
itself in the preceding year, broke out with worse violence, and some
soldiers and a centurion, besides several of the populace, were killed,
and the tribune of a praetorian cohort was wounded, while they were
trying to stop insults to the magistrates and the strife of the mob. This
disturbance was the subject of a debate in the Senate, and opinions were
expressed in favour of the praetors having authority to scourge actors.
Haterius Agrippa, tribune of the people, interposed his veto, and was
sharply censured in a speech from Asinius Gallus, without a word from
Tiberius, who liked to allow the Senate such shows of freedom. Still the
interposition was successful, because Augustus had once pronounced that
actors were exempt from the scourge, and it was not lawful for Tiberius
to infringe his decisions. Many enactments were passed to fix the amount
of their pay and to check the disorderly behaviour of their partisans. Of
these the chief were that no Senator should enter the house of a
pantomime player, that Roman knights should not crowd round them in the
public streets, that they should exhibit themselves only in the theatre,
and that the praetors should be empowered to punish with banishment any
riotous conduct in the spectators.

1:78. A request from the Spaniards that they might erect a temple to
Augustus in the colony of Tarraco was granted, and a precedent thus given
for all the provinces. When the people of Rome asked for a remission of
the one per cent tax on all saleable commodities, Tiberius declared by
edict "that the military exchequer depended on that branch of revenue,
and, further, that the State was unequal to the burden, unless the
twentieth year of service were to be that of the veteran's discharge."
Thus the ill-advised results of the late mutiny, by which a limit of
sixteen campaigns had been extorted, were cancelled for the future.

1:79. A question was then raised in the Senate by Arruntius and
Ateius whether, in order to restrain the inundations of the Tiber, the
rivers and lakes which swell its waters should be diverted from their
courses. A hearing was given to embassies from the municipal towns and
colonies, and the people of Florentia begged that the Clanis might not be
turned out of its channel and made to flow into the Arnus, as that would
bring ruin on themselves. Similar arguments were used by the inhabitants
of Interamna. The most fruitful plains of Italy, they said, would be
destroyed if the river Nar (for this was the plan proposed) were to be
divided into several streams and overflow the country. Nor did the people
of Reate remain silent. They remonstrated against the closing up of the
Veline lake, where it empties itself into the Nar, "as it would burst in
a flood on the entire neighbourhood. Nature had admirably provided for
human interests in having assigned to rivers their mouths, their
channels, and their limits, as well as their sources. Regard, too, must
be paid to the different religions of the allies, who had dedicated
sacred rites, groves, and altars to the rivers of their country. Tiber
himself would be altogether unwilling to be deprived of his neighbour
streams and to flow with less glory." Either the entreaties of the
colonies, or the difficulty of the work or superstitious motives
prevailed, and they yielded to Piso's opinion, who declared himself
against any change.

1:80. Poppaeus Sabinus was continued in his government
of the province of Moesia with the addition of Achaia and Macedonia.
It was part of Tiberius' character to prolong indefinitely military
commands and to keep many men to the end of their life with the same
armies and in the same administrations. Various motives have been
assigned for this. Some say that, out of aversion to any fresh
anxiety, he retained what he had once approved as a permanent
arrangement; others, that he grudged to see many enjoying promotion.
Some, again, think that though he had an acute intellect, his judgment
was irresolute, for he did not seek out eminent merit, and yet he
detested vice. From the best men he apprehended danger to himself,
from the worst, disgrace to the State. He went so far at last in this
irresolution, that he appointed to provinces men whom he did not mean
to allow to leave Rome.

1:81. I can hardly venture on any positive statement about the
consular elections, now held for the first time under this emperor, or,
indeed, subsequently, so conflicting are the accounts we find not only in
historians but in Tiberius' own speeches. Sometimes he kept back the
names of the candidates, describing their origin, their life and military
career, so that it might be understood who they were. Occasionally even
these hints were withheld, and, after urging them not to disturb the
elections by canvassing, he would promise his own help towards the
result. Generally he declared that only those had offered themselves to
him as candidates whose names he had given to the consuls, and that
others might offer themselves if they had confidence in their influence
or merit. A plausible profession this in words, but really unmeaning and
delusive, and the greater the disguise of freedom which marked it, the
more cruel the enslavement into which it was soon to plunge us.